Cleartrip CEO & Former Desiya CEO Arrested, Released

Stuart Crighton, CEO of online travel agent Cleartrip and Amit Taneja, former CEO of Desiya were arrested yesterday in Gurgaon, and released immediately on bail, Cleartrip has disclosed on its blog.

The issue is around a police complaint filed on 11th December 2009 by Travelocity, accusing Taneja and Cleartrip of data theft, stealing intellectual property, trade secrets, sensitive data, proprietary technology source codes, their entire hotel business model and projections, including an excel file named ‘Hotels Growth Model.xls’.

Travelguru, which owned Desiya, had been acquired by Travelocity in August 2009, and Taneja’s services were terminated on September 19th 2009. Cleartrip COO P.K.X. Thomas has told the Hindustan Times that Travelocity had subsequently tried to prevent Taneja from joining Cleartrip, and filing an FIR was towards that end. Travelocity had estimated a 15 percent loss in market share – around Rs 20 crore, over the year following the leak.

2 Comments

I Think Travelocity is facing some tough competation in Travell business from other competitors. Being a No.1 and Giant Travel company,travelocity should have used their resources and compete with cleartrip and other travell portals in a business(and not to behave like a chiled who is complaining about other child, Come On!!its a business grow up…!! ).Insted off damaging company image and thus hoping to defeat the competitors, Travelocity should concentrate in a business to compete with the cleartrip and other competitors.